Volume 5 Number 1-4March
1994

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Civic Action: The Marine Corps Experience in Vietnam, Part I

Peter Brush, Library Science, University of Kentucky

According to a 1939 US Army Field Manual, the ultimate objective of all
military operations is the destruction of the enemy's armed forces in
battle. Decisive defeat in battle breaks the enemy's will to continue
fighting and forces him to sue for peace. 1
This early Clausewitzian doctrine served the US well in World War II, but
by the 1960's the teachings of Mao Tse-Tung, Lin Piao and Che Guevara
became relevant to an understanding of the nature of "people's wars" or
"wars of national liberation." The most effective strategy for opposing
communism in wars of this type was of a dual nature. The destructive phase
would address the conventional force threat, while the constructive phase
was concerned with the political, economic, social, and ideological
aspects of the struggle.

The Marines understood this duality best. According to British
counterinsurgency expert Sir Robert Thompson, "Of all the United States
forces [in Vietnam] the Marine Corps alone made a serious attempt to
achieve permanent and lasting results in their tactical area of
responsibility by seeking to protect the rural population." 2
This appreciation of the value of pacification was part of the historical
baggage that the Marines brought with them to Vietnam.

The Americans and South Vietnamese seemed to understand the importance
of the relationship between the government and the civilian population,
but were unsuccessful in translating this understanding into practice.
With the Communists, their self-interest demanded that they impose severe
controls on the use of violence toward the population. Sir Robert Thompson
wrote, "Normally communist behaviour towards the mass of the population is
irreproachable and the use of terror is highly selective." 3
To a much greater degree than the American and South Vietnamese (GVN)
troops, the Communists depended on the goodwill of the Vietnamese rural
population.

In February, 1965, the US began Operation Rolling Thunder, the
sustained bombing of North Vietnam. Many of the USAF and SVNAF
fighter-bombers making those attacks were based at Danang, whose airfield
was considered vulnerable to retaliatory attacks by the PLAF (the military
forces of the National Liberation Front). With an insufficient logistical
base in place to support the arrival of heavily armed US Army units, it
was decided to dispatch Marine Corps forces. The Marines were able to go
ashore where no port facilities or airfields were available, and it was
not necessary to stockpile supplies ahead of landing. By mid-1965 there
were 51,000 US servicemen in Vietnam, some 16,500 Marines and 3,500 Army
troopers in defensive missions; the rest functioned in an advisory
capacity to the ARVN 4
and as airmen flying and supporting combat missions. The Marines would be
assigned responsibility for I Corps, the military region of South Vietnam
comprising the five northern-most provinces. The remaining three military
regions were the responsibility of the US Army.

By 1966 Westmoreland had completed the construction of the requisite
support infrastructure. The Army, denied the opportunity to invade North
Vietnam, applied the doctrine of conventional operations and force
structure that had worked against the Japanese and Germans in World War II
and against the Chinese in Korea: the efficient application of massive
firepower. The goal of this search and destroy strategy was the attrition
of insurgent forces and their support systems at a rate faster than the
enemy could replace them, either by infiltration from North Vietnam or by
recruitment internally. The strategy of attrition offered the prospect of
winning the war more quickly than with traditional counterinsurgency
operations.

Westmoreland's strategy notwithstanding, the Communists were largely
successful in controlling the fighting during the war. General Lewis Walt,
commander of the Marines in Vietnam, noted, "The fact is that every
enlargement of U.S. military action has been a specific and measured
response to escalation by the enemy." 5
Whether one sees the US as leading this escalation or merely responding to
it, as with the strategic, so too was the tactical; over 80 percent of the
firefights were initiated by the Communists. 6

The US government seemed cognizant of the relative value of
pacification efforts--programs designed to bring security and government
control and services to the countryside. In 1966, Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara offered the following evaluation of the situation in
Vietnam:

The large-unit operations war, which we know best how to fight and
where we have had our successes, is largely irrelevant to pacification
as long as we do not have it.

Success in pacification depends on the interrelated functions of
providing physical security, destroying the VC apparatus, motivating the
people to cooperate and establishing responsive local government. 7

Both the US Army and Marine Corps understood that the war in Vietnam
could not be won solely by defeating the large units of the enemy.
Attention to counterinsurgency operations 8
would be necessary to remove the political influence of the NLF,
particularly in the rural areas of South Vietnam. The Army remained
convinced throughout that the emphasis should properly remain focused on
conventional warfare and the interdiction of the enemy's external support
mechanisms. For the Army, large unit operations were felt to be the key to
victory, and small unit operations were largely ignored.

The US Marine Corps had adopted a strategic approach that emphasized
pacification over large-unit battles almost from the outset of their
arrival in Vietnam. Previous Marine deployment as colonial infantry in
Haiti, the Dominican Republic and especially Nicaragua had elements of
civil development and an emphasis upon the training of local militia.
Marine General Walt, himself trained by Marines active in these Caribbean
campaigns, held that many of the lessons learned in the "Banana Wars" were
applicable to Vietnam. 9
These lessons were spelled out in the U.S. Marine Corps Small Wars Manual
(1940):

In regular warfare, the responsible officers simply strive to attain
a method of producing the maximum physical effect with the force at
their disposal. In small wars, the goal is to gain decisive results with
the least application of force and the consequent minimum loss of life.
The end aim is the social, economic, and political development of the
people subsequent to the military defeat of the enemy insurgent forces.
In small wars, tolerance, sympathy, and kindness should be the keynote
of our relationship with the mass of the population. 10

This was not merely a policy of altruism; one Marine general noted that
there were 100,000 Vietnamese within 81mm mortar range of the Da Nang
airfield. Anything that would instill a friendly attitude toward Marines
among the civilian population would clearly help carry out the more
conventional mission of the Marines. 11

Shortly after the arrival in force of the Marines in 1965, a program
called Combined Action Platoon was initiated. Each CAP unit consisted of a
fifteen-man rifle squad assigned to a particular hamlet in the Marine
tactical area of responsibility. CAP units worked with platoons of local
Vietnamese militia (Popular Forces, or PFs). CAP Marines were volunteers
with combat experience who were given basic instruction on Vietnamese
culture and customs. These combined units conducted night patrols and
ambushes, gradually making the local Vietnamese forces assume a greater
share of responsibility for village security. Their mission was the
destruction of the NLF infrastructure, organization of local intelligence
networks, and the military training of the PFs. CAPs were immediately
successful. General Walt described the results as being "far beyond our
most optimistic hopes." 12
Two years after the initiation of CAP a US Department of Defense report
noted that the Hamlet Evaluation System security score gave CAP-protected
villages a score of 2.95 out of a possible 5.0 maximum, compared with an
average of 1.6 for all I Corps villages. There was a direct correlation
between the time a CAP stayed in a village and the degree of security
achieved, with CAP-protected villages progressing twice as fast as those
occupied by the Popular Forces militia alone. 13

The casualty rate for CAP units was lower than that of units conducting
search-and-destroy missions. British counterinsurgency expert Gen. Richard
Clutterbuck noted that although Marine casualties were high, they were
only fifty percent of the casualties of the normal infantry battalions
being maneuvered by helicopters on large scale operations. 14
The extension rate of Marine participants in CAP exceeded sixty percent,
and there were no recorded desertions of Popular Force soldiers from CAP
units. 15
The NLF never regained control of a hamlet which was protected by a CAP
unit.16
By the end of 1968 there were 114 CAP units in I Corps, providing security
for 400,000 Vietnamese people, or fifteen percent of the population of I
Corps.17

One of the superior combat narratives of the Vietnam War, The
Village, by F. J. West, Jr., describes the history of one CAP unit in
a typical Vietnamese village. 18

General Lewis Walt, commander of the III Marine Amphibious Force, was
in the habit of asking his district advisors to comment on the
effectiveness of Marine battalions in I Corps. In June, 1966, Walt visited
Major Richard Braun, advisor to the Binh Son district chief in Quang Ngai
Province. Braun told Walt that the Marines would be more effective if they
worked with the Vietnamese rather than searching for Viet Cong on their
own. When Walt asked for specific recommendations, Braun suggested sending
a platoon of Marines to the village of Binh Nghia.

The ARVN had been chased out of Binh Nghia two years previously. A
platoon of the Viet Cong lived there regularly, and often a company or
more would come in to resupply or rest. Binh Nghia belonged to the NLF,
and was the full-time government of five of the seven hamlets in the
region and controlled the boat traffic moving on the Tra Bong River. 19

On 10 June, 1966, Corporal William Beebe led a group of Marine
volunteers from their base camp to the Vietnamese village of Binh Nghia.
All the Marines were seasoned combat veterans who had been chosen on their
ability to get along with the villagers. With the arrival of the Marines,
the village police chief felt strong enough to move his security forces
into the village proper from a nearby outpost. Chief Ap Thanh Lam called a
meeting of the villagers, explained that the Americans and his men had to
come to stay, and asked for volunteers to construct a new fortified
headquarters. Forty civilians joined the Marines, policemen, and Popular
Forces in constructing a fort. Work progressed on the fort by day, and by
night combined Marine-PF patrols went hunting for the enemy. Beebe later
commented on his early experiences in Binh Nghia: "I still get shaky
thinking of those first few nights.... It was nothing [previous
experiences in combat] compared to that ville. That was the most scared
I've ever been in my life."

The activities of the combined unit settled into a regular pattern. The
police left combat to the Marines and PFs. Chief Lam considered his police
to be highly trained specialists and concentrated on intelligence matters,
leaving night patrols and ambushes to the others. Initially, the Marines
and PFs were distrustful of each other, but over time came to respect each
others' particular strengths. The Marines used the PFs as "eyes and ears"
because they could not always depend on them to advance with the Marines.
But the PFs were valuable at point due to "the belief that a Vietnamese
soldier could spot a Viet Cong at night before an American could." From
the beginning the Marines could shoot better than the Viet Cong; "Long
hours on the ranges of boot camp.... had seen to that. And after hundreds
of patrols in the village the Marines were learning to move as well as the
Viet Cong."

The Marines liked duty in the village. They enjoyed the admiration of
the PFs who were unwilling to challenge the Viet Cong alone. They were
pleased that the villagers were impressed because the Marines hunted the
Viet Cong as the Viet Cong for years had hunted the PFs and village
officials. The Marines were aware that the village children did not avoid
them, and that the children's parents were more than polite. The Marines
"had accepted too many invitations to too many meals in too many homes to
believe they were not liked by many and tolerated by most." 20
Their conduct had won them admiration and status within the Vietnamese
village society in which they were working. This combined action platoon
would pay a high price for their success, for most of them would die at
Binh Nghia.

In September, 1966, the NLF attempted to force the Marines out of the
village. Eighty local-force Viet Cong joined with sixty soldiers from the
5th Company of the 409th NVA Battalion in an attack on the fort, which was
defended by six Marines (the others were away from the fort on patrol) and
twelve PFs. 21
Five Americans and six PFs were killed, 22
but the position held. The day after the fight the commander of the 1st
Marine Division entered the smoldering fort to speak to the Marines.
General Lowell English remarked that perhaps the combined platoon was too
light for the job, too exposed, and overmatched from the start. He was
considering pulling them out; they could stay at the fort, or go.

One Marine stated the position of the group:

The general was a nice guy. He was trying to give us an out. But we
couldn't leave. What would we have said to the PFs after the way we
pushed them to fight the Cong? We had to stay, There wasn't one of us
who wanted to leave. 23

Once during a fight the Marines called in an artillery strike on thirty
Viet Cong. The single round fell three hundred yards short, destroying a
thatched hut and killing two civilians. 24
Even though the combined unit Marines were not responsible for the error,
they saw too much of the villagers and lived too closely with them not to
be affected by personal grief. Rifles and grenades were to be the weapons
of the Americans at Binh Nghia. The village stayed intact throughout some
of the heaviest fighting in Vietnam--there was never an airstrike called
for Binh Nghia during the war. 25
Although the region was marked as "VC" on military operational maps, they
were also marked in red as "out of bounds" for harassment and interdiction
artillery fire because American ground forces patrolled the area.

By March, 1967, it appeared that the enemy had modified their strategy
toward Binh Son district in general and toward Binh Nghia in particular.
The PLAF previously had sought out contact with the combined unit, but now
avoided the patrols. Vietnamese military intelligence reported that the
NLF political cadres had attended a conference in January, where it had
been decided to no longer fight the spreading pacification efforts with
local troops. Rather, the guerrillas were to gather intelligence and act
as guides and reinforcements for the main forces. At the January
conference the Binh Nghia combined unit had been denounced more bitterly
than any other US or GVN program. The unit was hurting the NLF militarily;
its patrols and ambushes prevented NLF use of the Tra Bong River and
blocked one route to the air base at Chu Lai. Its presence impeded rice
collection, taxation, proselytizing, and recruitment. NLF attempts to
reestablish control over the area after the attack on the fort in
September were a failure.

By October, 1967, it was felt by District and Marine Headquarters that
the job of the combined unit at Binh Nghia was finished. The village was
pacified and the Marines were needed elsewhere. By December, 1967, the US
Army and ROK (Republic of Korea) Marines moved into the area while the
Marines moved further north, toward the DMZ. A captain from District
Headquarters felt that security in the area had not improved, as the Army
troops were too far in the hills and the Koreans were behind a massive
defensive barrier.

By 1971 the war had passed by Binh Nghia. The Americans were gone. The
Viet Cong guerrillas and local force soldiers were gone. The fort
constructed by the combined unit and the Vietnamese was gone, the wind and
rain having caused the sand bags and punji stakes to cave in and wash
away. But the village was intact, and survived the fighting.

The Marines knew they held no inherent right to institutional
perpetuity within the US armed forces. The Corps had remained a separate
service because of its performance in previous conflicts. For the Marines,
a reading of the primers for Marxist guerrilla warfare and revolution
provided evidence that wars of national liberation would be the principle
means of exerting Communist political and military influence. As a
consequence, a comprehensive counterinsurgency program must include a
serious commitment to civic action-style pacification. CAP units were felt
to be an efficient allocation of Marine assets:

When the guns are quiet, destructive combat power is dormant; the
commander limited to only this dimension of warfare is hobbled. Here
civic action, the constructive aspect of combat power, gains increased
significance. 26

Marine civic action was not limited to the utilization of military
assets in Vietnam. Organized Marine Corps Reserve units in the United
States also made significant contributions. Marine reserves spent $80,000
on elementary school "kits" containing pencils, notebooks, erasers,
scissors, and other essential school items. $33,800 was spent on
brick-making machines, $7,200 on rice threshers, $3,100 toward the
construction of dams to increase agricultural production through
irrigation, $32,095 for civilian hospital construction, and over $3,000
for the purchase of water pumps to provide drinking water. Money from the
Marine Corps Reserve Civic Action Fund also bought emergency food, toys
for children, and supported the Vietnamese 4-T Program, an organization
similar to the 4-H Program in the United States. 27